Halo 4 DLC pass detailed

$25 War Games Map Pass offers nine competitive multiplayer maps to be released between December and April; included with $100 limited edition.

Gamers wishing to pick up Halo 4 and all its add-on map packs will end up spending at least $85 to do so. Microsoft today announced the Halo 4 War Games Map Pass, a $25 offering that gets players nine maps in total that will be released between December 2012 and April 2013. Halo 4's Daybreak map.

The map packs will retail for about $10 each as standalone downloads, meaning those who purchase the pass will save about 15 percent. In addition, players who purchase the Map Pass will receive two in-game helmets ("Scanner" and "Strider") and an in-game emblem ("Falcon").

The first map pack due out for Halo 4 is titled Crimson. It will launch in December and includes the Wreckage, Harvest, and Shatter maps. Following in February 2013 will be the Majestic map pack, which adds the Landfall, Monolith, and Skyline environments to the mix. Rounding out the offerings will be the Castle map pack in April 2013. It adds the Daybreak, Outcast, and Perdition maps.

Halo 4 is due exclusively for Xbox 360 on November 6 worldwide. The game is a direct sequel to 2007's Halo 3 and is the first numbered entry in the series developed outside of Bungie Studios. It is the first installment in the Reclaimer Trilogy, which will span Halo 5 and Halo 6.

Oh, I forgot the Xbox Live Gold Sales. You can get the map packs for 50% off if you get them when they come on sale. I suppose that would be your best bet. (and that stuff QUICKLY makes a year-long Gold Account pay for itself and then some.)

The halo series really never put out all the DLC in "GOTY" packs. The Halo 3 map packs were eventually released in Halo ODST, but that required purchasing a full game. Halo Reach map packs are still stand-alone sales. The Halo Anniversary packs came with the Halo 1 remake.... but don't hold your breath on getting a sweet deal on the map packs anytime soon; thus the Season Pass is a good deal. Or you can just not buy it and let the rest of us do so. And not buy "Day 1 DLC". Fine with me; if it's worth the money I'll happily buy it. These companies aren't doing this for fun. If they are not making money they will stop producing games. Simple as that.

What alot of you simply don't see is that this is leading into developers charging and doing as they please because you open your wallets wide and LET them. We thought day one DLC and stupid Map Packs was bad, as well as other nickle and dime DLC crap. So, now we have Seasons Passes becoming the NEXT rip off tactic. All because you let them. That's why people are upset. Was 60 dollars somehow NOT ENOUGH already for the game??? No one put's their foot down and say's ENOUGH! I for one do. I refuse to buy this garbage. I wait for GOTY or Ultimate editions and don't give them piles of money.

Nope, sorry. I don't even buy games at launch if they have this stupid pass. I'll wait till the price drops on any game that announces a season pass before the game is launched.

Besides, charging for a multiplayer map isn't all that bad, but what they are charging for them is. If they weren't so pricey, more people would buy them, then more people would play them, then more people would buy them. One or two dollars a map would more than cover the cost of developing them. 800+ points for a map pack is a joke.

Some people hate this, but when it comes to games I know I am going to play the heck out of, they are a good idea. If it only saves me 33% thats fine because I am going buy all the dlc's anyways. For games I play only on a limited basis, then obviously buying a season pass would be ridiculous, especially since I only buy the DLC's to games I really enjoy. Halo 4 is going to be one of those games, but I got the limited edition so its all good.

I'll pass, they will be empty maps most after the first couple of weeks. People seem to be more interested in the achievements that go with them than the maps themselves. I must have played some of the Reach DLC maps once ever.

What's weird is just the imbalance. The game has campaign, multiplayer with 10 maps, forge, theathre, spartan ops intro and all the assets for $60. Then the DLC of 9 maps is $25, half of the full game if bought seperatedly.

So are they selling the game dirt cheap or are they asking a ridicilous price for the maps? By logic the 10 maps of the original game alone should cost $30 while campaign is the most effortive section with the voice actors, AI programmers and cinematic designers.

If you could buy a single map (or any DLC was relative to the game) for $1-2 I doubt there would be much complaining.

I think I'll pass on the DLC for Halo 4 multi player maps. WHY? I've bought all the DLC for Halo 3, Halo Reach, and you know what I've come to find out? People play on them for the first couple months, and then you're stuck playing default maps....and ONCE and a GREAT WHILE you might find a team that has all the maps. Its a waste of money if you ask me. Then if you think about it, 90 percent of the maps aren't even as good as the default maps... so yeah, so PASSING on this.

Halo is a franchise that could easily charge $50 for this dlc pass, like CoD, but they're not. Even individually the map pack are $10, compared to CoD & Battlefields $15 packs.

I also think that this will be the best Halo game since Halo 2, simply because Bungie isn't in the picture anymore. Bungie was stagnating Halo and had no fresh ideas. 343 has already improved the overall look of the game by making it look much more realistic, whereas Bungie made it look cartoony.

Halo has fresh blood pumping through it. Halo will once again reign supreme like the days of old ;>}

Halo maps haven't been worth the money since Halo 2 when they would become free so everyone could play the same maps together. In Halo 3 they tried to bar you from playing certaing game types if you didn't have the DLC maps. Result: nobody played those game types. In Reach they had a couple DLC specific game types or they would match you to other players with those maps. Result: nobody played those game types and those matches were rare. I felt ripped off when I bought the maps for Halo 3. I didn't feel like I missed anything by not buying them for Reach.

They need to be free. Not because I want to save money or because I believe DLC is wrong or because I don't think 343 deserves the money, but because there is no real value in something when only a very small number of people can make use of it. They're better off selling armor permutations. I don't mind using the default armor. Heck, this system is working great for Mass Effect 3.

@realguitarhero5 Exactly. Either pay for it, or don't...it's that simple. I got Halo: Reach but didn't buy all of the map packs, I didn't need all of them. If everyone here actually designed video games or was in the video game industry, they'd realize how much $$ there is to be made. It's a business people. Some companies care about the community etc. etc. but at the end of the day the bottom line is what matters.

@DarthLod Bungie and now 343 have done map packs since Halo 2. The Halo 2 map pack was free for DL but you could pay for a hard copy. When Halo 3 rolled around on the 360, they released map packs for $10 a piece.

Halo 4 is doing the exact same thing, but also offering a cheaper alternative for those who anticipate buying all the maps anyways.

This is a win-win. Don't cry. This isn't Day 1 DLC. It isn't on-disk DLC. It isn't mandatory. This is no Mass Effect 3.

@DarthLod 100% correct. I'm 20 years old with 6 grand of spending money in my bank account and still ain't dumb enough to not only buy a game for $60 fucking dollars, but to then go pay an additional $25 for a map pack?...Yea right. I'll just wait it out until the game drops to $30 and probably won't even buy their rip off map packs. Hopefully theres a sale on black friday.

@Gojomez lol, u're delusional, CoD map packs are 15$ for 5 maps aka 3$/map which means 9 maps would be 27$ which is not much of a difference from 25$.

Not only that but this is a season pass bs which means it has a small discount which means that sold separately they probably average at the same price as CoD maps. So lol at your "half the price" comment.

PS. Don't get the wrong idea, I hate both equally,lol, map packs are ripoffs.

I have to disagree with you there. I think that its ok that they are charging. Only because they are giving us those weekly level thing for free. Thought im not sure what the week episode thing is about or either or not it'll be good

@Hellhound30x I haven't bought too many maps recently but wasn't there a feature so you could specifically play with the new maps? I remember that being on reach if I remember right and it allowed you to stick with the maps only DLC available.

@TrueGB I agree 100%. I remember when ODST came out with the new maps included and bungie literally said "the maps will not come out on the marketplace" What do you know...3 or 4 months later the maps release on the market place. It was just a scheme to get people to buy shitty ass ODST. I was one of the dumb ones for buying it, because I couldn't play MLG playlist without the new maps. I will never make a dumb mistake like that again after that. At least the price of ODST wasn't too bad after I traded in my halo3 for store credit.

@HaK-ForgoTT3n@DarthLod If you had a brain you would know that Halo 4 wont receive a price cut for years. Since the video game market is so heavily regulated, black friday wont mean anything until 5 years from now regarding Halo 4.

@Gojomez No, they work for the MILLIONS they have already made with the game. Developers used to release this stuff just to keep the games alive, not to mention releasing the tools for the community to make hundreds of their own maps.

I get that more work has to go into making environments these days but it's really not good value for money, especially as it also fragments the community and you'll probably end up playing the vanilla maps mostly anyway.

@Falru Halo is probably the one franchise I don't need to play to know if it's good or not. I've played every Halo game and they never change the core gameplay mechanics because that's the foundation Halo is built on. I'm only referring to single player btw. I haven't played much multiplayer since Halo 2 because it just didn't stack up. Hopefully this games' multiplayer is also a return to greatness.